kassab crime family
As I read Morris meticulous examination the evidence, the picture in my mind became less clear. Wade Smith rarely grants interviews. WS: Yes. He also tried to get the case dismissed, claiming double jeopardy and starting an appeals process that would delay his trial for years. Brighton terrorist Yacqub Khayre allegedly was only a phone call to a north-west contact away from being able to obtain the shotgun he used to kill a man, take a woman hostage and shoot three police last month. Kassab filed a citizens criminal complaint in April 1974, petitioning a federal court to convene a grand jury and determine if MacDonald could be charged. Many think this woman could have been Helena Stoeckley, a drug abuser and professed member of a witchcraft cult who repeatedly confessed to having been at the MacDonald house the night of the murders, but recanted her story whenever she seemed to fear prosecution. In this case, it carries particular weight: police are trying to break the hold, in some cases, of family ties that go back generations. There were fibers from a blonde wig that matched the description of Helena Stoeckley. WS: We all depend on excellent, honest detective work. Mundane things that Jeffrey MacDonald has not been able to do for over 30 years. But he taunted the police. That huge standard protects us from miscarriages of justice. MacDonald sued McGinniss for fraud in 1987, with a mistrial leading them to settle out of court for $325,000. He adamantly denied all charges but was at a loss for words during cross-examination by the prosecution. No particular families run any particular suburbs; they are all dealing, all the time, to whoever buys. Family members of radio personality Casey Kasem have settled a lawsuit against his widow that alleged her neglect and physical abuse led to his death in 2014. Wadea and Aelyas Kassab are both buried in Pennsylvania. WebIn July 1974, a Federal judge acted on a citizen's criminal complaint by Kassab and others, by putting the case before a grand jury. But there was, including wax drippings (MacDonald insisted that one of the intruders carried a candle), fibers, and hairs that did not belong to the household or family members. Then he injured himself and set up the scene to make the crimes appear to be the work of intruders. Use census records and voter lists to see where families with the Kassab surname lived. Recently, the Fourth District Court of Appeals ordered Fox to consider new evidence, and to examine all the evidence as a whole. Shortly after relocating to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, he was made Group Surgeon to the Green Berets. Carl Williams was a boy from Broady, whose fat fingers spread across the state, but we know little about the boys from Broady who are ordering murders and peddling drugs now. Colette had been stabbed 16 times and punctured 21 times with an ice pick, while 5-year-old Kimberley was killed by six blows to the head and eightto 10 stab wounds, according to a. Jeffrey MacDonald had also been at the home at the time, but he suffered only minor injuries compared to what his family endured. WebThe Kassab family name was found in the USA in 1920. Aelyas followed Wadea to the United States in 1899. We needed the Kassabs to shut up, just calm down, let us do the investigation and well find out who did it.. Who else is going to fight this thing if not me? Freddy Kassab said of his years-long quest to put his son-in-law Jeffrey MacDonald behind bars for killing his stepdaughter and two young granddaughters. Wadea left Syria in 1889 with two companions and arrived in the United States that same year. After completing high school in Chester, he too went to dental school and set up practice in Wadeas office. The Tibas, Haddaras, Chaouks, Kassabs, and Kheirs are north-west Melbourne's version of the Five Families, the major players in the New York mafia. This was about 31% of all the recorded Kassab's in USA. It ultimately concluded that MacDonalds wounds were self-inflicted, and his story entirely fabricated. He drew on his previous knowledge of MacDonald, who he had met years earlier while courting Colettes mother, Mildred. Bettmann/Getty ImagesA neighbors dog and MP guards securing the MacDonald property. The lead prosecutor for the case, Jim Blackburn began to analyze every piece of evidence from the trial, including MacDonald's pajama shirt, which was draped over Colette's body, and the bedsheet she was wrapped in. The couple got married when Colette was just 20 years old after discovering that she was pregnant. Because that's what crime figures do in the north-west, most of the time. It appeared to investigators that MacDonald had staged the scene, inspired by the recent Manson Family murders to blame hippies for his crime. In 1982, she sat down with Gunderson and Beasley in a taped interview, claiming that she had been part of a satanic cult that had killed the family because MacDonald was not cooperative in helping heroin addicts during his time at Fort Bragg. He tried to take his case to the Supreme Court in 1979, but they declined to review the lower courts decision. Kassab filed a citizens criminal complaint in April 1974, petitioning a federal court to convene a grand jury and determine if MacDonald could be charged. This collection contains an undated photograph of Wadea and Aelyas Kassab and scans of two typed manuscripts. It would take six more months before Mildred Kassab reached the same conclusion. Inexperienced military police failed to pick up a woman near the house who fit MacDonalds description. Link your TV provider to stream full episodes and live TV. Stevenson told reporters in 2005 that he had promised Freddy Kassab on his death bed that he would continue the familys quest to keep MacDonald behind bars, according to The Raleigh News & Observer. Rep. Allard Lowenstein supporting MacDonalds claim that the Army wrongfully accused him and were trying to cover up their mistake. MacDonalds relationship with his father-in-law, who had been a staunch supporter, became strained. Freddy Kassab had inserted himself into the 1970 military hearing and made himself the center of a media circus, holding news conferences and firing off letters to members of Congress. He was troubled by MacDonalds apparently cavalier attitude about the brutal murders on an appearance of "The Dick Cavett Show. He worries that we are moving into a period in which the finality of verdicts is so zealously protected (a legacy, in part, of 9/11) that new evidence offers little hope of challenging them. Then, meet Christopher Scarver the man who killed cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer. 1,169 Birth, Marriage & Death. And a victim falls on the concrete. MacDonald invited author Joe McGinniss to write a book about the case before it had reached a verdict. MacDonald claimed that his daughter Kimberly wet his side of the bed, prompting him to go to sleep on the couch. Their second child Kristen was born in May 1967. The Tibas are the only clan in the five families that can boast three generations of serious offenders from murderers to drug traffickers. He claimed there was insufficient evidence, while civilian defense attorney Bernard Segal argued the CID had improperly handled the scene and that alternative suspects like local drug addict Helena Stoeckley, believed to be the blonde woman at the scene, continued to roam free. I think that one of the problems MacDonald had was that they expected him to undertake to find these killers, to go on a mission to find them. 26-year-old Colette MacDonald had been stabbed nearly forty times with an icepick and a knife while pig was scrawled on the headboard of her bed in her own blood. The man is a fanatic.. Since 1979, the MacDonald case has continued to trouble those who delve beneath the surface of the media narrative. He was the lawyer she was talking to one-on-one who had been appointed to advise her of her rights. That kind of story never ends. In July 1974, a Federal judge acted on a citizen's criminal complaint by Kassab and others, by putting the case before a grand jury. In the fall of 1963, they decided to get married and in April of the following year, their daughter Kimberly was born. Others relate to significant organised crime figures, and their businesses, such as tattoo parlours. Others would say that that was a healthy thing to do. You trust him. Thinking that he could never reveal it? He didnt do that. Please try again later. 741 Immigration & Travel. MacDonald now waits to see if the federal judge will vacate his 33-year-old conviction. But many of the major players now are either related to these families, or closely linked within the criminal milieu. Now deceased, she remains a pivotal figure in the case. But there is a reasonable doubt, and because there is a reasonable doubt it is absolutely clear that he should be set free. Yet, the new gangland war fails to capture the imagination. 2015 NC State University. Tonight when I retire to my bed, I will not feel as safe from unpredictable evils as I did when I was a teenager reading scary stories. The veneer of the MacDonalds perfect marriage had also began to crack. He moved to California to become the director of emergency medicine at St. Mary's Medical Center in Long Beach. Freddy Kassab had inserted himself into the 1970 military hearing and made himself the center of a media circus, holding news conferences and firing off letters to members of Congress. Jeffrey MacDonald had it all. He worked first in a stove factory, a physically taxing and low-paying job, and later became a molder in a factory making brake shoes for the railroad. But while Kassab saw MacDonald as an engaged and loving father and husband, Army investigators grew suspicious of MacDonalds account of the killings and ordered him to appear for an Article 32 hearinga military process used to determine whether there was enough evidence to pursue formal charges against MacDonald. The nine-year lag between the murders and the trial is extremely unusual; experts consider such a lag to pose a great danger of wrongful conviction. The new war involves men with names many Victorians could barely pronounce shooting each other in downtrodden suburbs they have almost certainly never visited. He theorized that diet pills caused MacDonald to fly into a fit of rage. But his mother and father-in-law did not want him to do that. Brian Murtaugh says, Sure, Ill give it to him. But he is hopeful that the Fourth Court of Appeals, located in Richmond, Virginia, will take a careful look at the case and as a whole be more favorable to MacDonald. Waters rubbished that explanation. Even scarier stories, Ive found, can be true. I was born in May of that year, and would thus be the same age as the child Colette MacDonald was carrying when her life was snuffed out. After 3 a.m. on Feb. 17, 1970, dispatchers at Fort Bragg received an emergency call from the MacDonalds 544 Castle Drive address. Whats your sense of this? Evidence the defense never saw. Some criminal networks were recently identified as having more than 1000 members, of various ages and ethnic backgrounds; unlike the five families, they were not simply the first generation of children born in Australia to parents hailing from northern Lebanon. The family claims his body has never been found. WebWe found 33,440 records for Kassab last name. None of this has set MacDonald free. A grandson, also called Abdul, was considered such a threat he was subject to a National Anti-Gang Squad investigation last year the Australian Federal Police led team that represents an even greater escalation in the police response than the formation of Santiago. It doesnt make sense that this man, with no history of violence, went crazy like that. Nothing unique in any way. Kassab wanted to find justice and began writing letters to the Army and congressmen slamming the investigators for their errors and urging authorities to continue the investigation. Get an all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! The cost to Melbourne's north-west is huge. My wife and I can sit for hours and days and not talk to each other, but were both thinking, you know. Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, breaking news, sweepstakes, and more! Colettes grieving parents grew suspicious after a November 1970 phone call in which MacDonald claimed he found and killed one of the intruders. It is also a Manson-like killing. We would frequently meet at the crime scene and brainstorm the whole scenario. It frustrates police that low-level gangsters without a shred of integrity jut their chins out and shake their heads in a misplaced attempt at honour when asked who shot them, despite, in many instances, being maimed for life. The lead prosecutor for the case, Jim Blackburn began to analyze every piece of evidence from the trial, including MacDonald's pajama shirt, which was draped over Colette's body, and the bedsheet she was wrapped in. I even laughed at the idea of hippie murderers in North Carolina. Finally, in Wilmington, Jerry Leonard was ordered to tell what she had said to him 30 years ago. If he could have a psychotic episode and destroy his family stab them with an ice pick and a knife 100 times, beat them with a stick, then Billy Graham could. 6,889 Family Trees. LP: What has this case revealed about the flaws in our judicial system? I remember saying, It doesnt matter. The family lost its large house in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, and was forced to live in small quarters in a building they still owned. He was a nice, presentable young man. MacDonald, bloody but alive, was next to his wife, who had been pregnant with their third child when she was stabbed 16 times with a kitchen knife and 21 times with an icepick. These victims include Rachad Adra, who was killed and his four-year-old son injured, when a gunman with a high-powered weapon shot the wrong house in Thomastown in October 2015, and Khaled Abouhasna, who was killed in a shooting ambush six months earlier when he was mistaken for a ruthless standover man. That got my attention: the Oscar-winning Morris, whose film The Thin Blue Line exonerated a Texas man wrongfully convicted for murder, is one of the worlds great documentary filmmakers. However, critics of the book say that while it paints an emotional picture of a man wrongfully tried by the media, it cherrypicks evidence and largely ignores the physical evidence that led to MacDonalds 1979 conviction. WebIn 1971, his father-in-law, Freddy Kassab, became progressively suspicious of MacDonald and sought formal reopening of the case. Wherever you see the label psychopath," you could almost substitute monster or vampire youre talking about an unnatural person who does not behave according to normal human rules, and with that label, you can believe anything of them. I would have told the jury that it doesnt make sense. There were few major drug or weapon importations in the state that police could not, in some way, trace back to these families. WebIt is reported Ms Kassab entered Syria last year and that her husband, known as Sam, died on the border of Turkey in 2013. Worse still, Judge Franklin Dupree seemed to have his mind made up before the trial began. During this time, he met and became friendly with a number of Americans, including the ONeill family of Chester, Pennsylvania. We decided we needed Freddie and Mildred Kassab on our sides, lead investigator Peter Kearns said in a December 1986 lecture on the case, according to the docuseries. But an unfortunate thing happened in the following years. When a terrible crime is committed, society comes together to find someone to blame and to pay for the collective sense of violation. The list of misfortunes goes on: exculpatory evidence withheld; possible prosecutorial misconduct; and fallible humans who twisted the MacDonald story to fit their own agendas. But, they believe, the deterrent effect of jailing them, even if their victim remains tight-lipped, will have an impact. This was about 31% of all the recorded Kassab's in USA. The idea that people that were so certain who dont know any more than I do -- I dont believe Ill ever understand how they could be so sure. At St. Mary 's Medical Center in Long Beach as tattoo parlours to examine the... 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